*Apologies for cross posting*
Dear all
Below (and attached) you will find a call for papers for a special
issue of ephemera.
Kindest regards
Peter Fleming
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The Authentic Response: Capitalism and the Crisis of
Everyday Life
Call for papers for a special issue of ephemera: theory & politics in
organization (www.ephemeraweb.org)
Guest Editors: Anna-Maria Murtola, Tim Edkins & Peter Fleming
"The poet does not participate in the game. He stays in the corner, no
happier than those who are playing. He too has been cheated out of
his experience ? a modern man." (Benjamin, 1940: 332)
In the early twentieth century Walter Benjamin lamented what he
observed as the
waning of meaningful, long-term human experience, and the upsurge in
its stead of short, isolated moments of experience. He characterised
such degradation in
observations such as that of "the naked man of the contemporary world who lies
screaming like a newborn babe in the dirty diapers of the present"
(Benjamin, 1933:733). But Benjamin could not have foreseen what would
come to pass. Today capitalist corporations are in the vanguard of
attempting to re-establish this lost connection through a peculiar
evocation of authenticity. From new-age spiritualism in the workplace,
tokenistic difference and diversity employment policies, authentic
commodities and marketing tactics, leftish eco-enterprises and so on,
capitalism has recently presented authenticity as one of its leading
concerns. If the crisis of everyday life made authenticity a key
reference point for an emancipatory response, to an alienated world,
then it seems that the sentiment of this response has itself been
objectified and put to work as a commodity, business ideology and
marketing stunt
(Fleming, 2009).
Authenticity and its connection to recent developments in managerial
ideology and practice is the topic of this special issue. We are
especially concerned with the way in which authenticity ? pertaining
to the commodity, corporation, labour relations and soforth ?
represents an attempt to recompose an experience of everyday life that
sutures its more traumatic components: how the failings of social
structures are relocated to, and experienced in, an individual?s
malaise by the technology of authenticity - which then promises a
means to solve them within the bounds of the individual (Adorno,
2003/1964). We suspect that the recent prominence of a 'jargon of
authenticity' represents capitalism commodifying its own crisis, a
fragmentation of experience precipitated by the accumulation process
and an increasingly encompassing social factory. There are in
particular three elements of the commodification of authenticity that
we find worthy of further analysis:
? First, while born in the abnegation of rationalism in romantic thought
(especially with the birth of the ?unique? individual), authenticity became an
important motif in radical politics associated with humanist, existential and
radical engagements with capitalism. This 'spirit' of authenticity
appears to be
alive and well in the plush offices of large corporations in which a
kind of ?get real? slacker cool has become a guiding ethos. What
happens to dissent, truth and resistance when they are solicited by
the corporation, via demands for
individual authenticity (for workers to just ?be themselves?)? Does
this change
conceptions and practices of resistance, at work? If so, what could this mean
more broadly for social and political participation, especially if
many modes of
resistance are becoming entangled in, and conflated with, a desire for
individual authenticity?
? A second element of authenticity that is of note is the way in which it is
structured by a fundamental absence. The call for workers to express their
unique identities found in recent business discourse, for example,
turns on the
assumption that all is presently not authentic, that something is missing and
needs to be addressed. The same is discernible in the plethora of authentic
commodities available on the market, ready to respond to consumer?s cravings
for the authentic. In other words, authenticity is more of a symptom of an
abiding absence. What exactly is missing in the sphere of organized labour and
life that might prompt this managerial response, and how does the jargon of
authenticity shape perceptions of this lack at the heart of contemporary work
and life? For example, does authenticity serve here to produce and instil a
particular model of individual needs, capacities or desires, to be
fulfilled at
work and elsewhere? Here an analysis of sociality, life and joy might be
important.
? And this brings us to a third observation. Attempts to render an experience,
commodity or culture ?authentic? paradoxically in general rely upon something
putatively outside the commodity or market. For example, authentic tourism
(e.g., slum tours) crafts an experience that apparently transcends the crass
commercialism of typical holiday packages, and asks for a high price as a
result. Thus non-commodified forms of life are appropriated and endowed with
an aura of authenticity, which puts them to work inside the market
mechanism. Does this peculiar ambivalence harbour zones of instability and
?genuine? emancipatory potential to supersede the commodity-form, or is it
merely yet another example of the remarkable resilience and flexibility of
capitalism?
If the ideology of authenticity is a suspicious corporate response to
a structural crisis of experience precipitated by capitalism itself,
then this special issue aims to register a kind of counter-response.
We invite papers that explore the discourse of authenticity in and
around the corporation, with particular emphasis on its analysis as a
symptom pertaining to a crooked reality. We are certainly not adverse
to strictly philosophicalmeditations on authenticity, but will be
particularly favourable to papers that investigate the political
economy of authenticity, in the context of contemporary work and
organizations. Moreover, although the editors of this special issue
are suspicious of the notion of authenticity, we are also interested
in the way it might be re-scripted as a progressive emancipatory
stance. This could involve, for example, examining where and how a
re-scripting may be carried out: in the production process perhaps ?
such as in the management tools exercised by workers behind the
corporation?s closed doors; or maybe in the consumption process ? in
the ways that ?shop front? staff and consumers engage. How might this
re-scripting function, given authenticity?s utility at
present?
While certainly not exhaustive, potential topics for submissions might
include:
? Authenticity as management ideology and practice
? Capitalism, contradiction and authenticity
? Authenticity and the ?experience economy?
? Authenticity and individuation at work
? Authenticity and the connection to tradition
? Glorification of authenticity
? Simulation of authenticity
? Authenticity and the ?new spirit of capitalism?
? Performance, self and dis-identification at work
? Authenticity movements in and around the workplace
? Authenticity, sight and the corporate spectacle
? Self-help, technologies of the self, and the authentic subject
? Authenticity and the cultural worker as model labourer
Deadline for submissions: 1 December 2009. All contributions should be
submitted to the special issue editors via email to either
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] Please
note that three categories of contributions are invited: articles,
notes and reviews. Information
can be found at: http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/call.htm. Articles
and notes
will undergo a double blind review process. All submissions should
follow ephemera's submission guidelines, available at:
http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/submit.htm
About the editors
Anna-Maria Murtola?s PhD thesis Against Commodification: Experience,
Authenticity, Utopia (Åbo Akademi, Finland) analyses contemporary
commercial mobilisations of experience, authenticity and utopia in
attempts to respond to a critique of commodification. Her research
focuses on the shifting boundary between the economic and the
non-economic and various conceptualisations of the relationship
between the two. From September 2009 she will be teaching at Keele
University.
Tim Edkins is a PhD researcher at Queen Mary University of London:
where he is based in the School of Business and Management and the
department of Drama. He has recently presented papers on two areas of
his research: the use of performance, simulation and authenticity in
state interventions, particularly in the delivery of British welfare
policy aimed at reducing long-term unemployment (Performance Studies
International 14, 2008, University of Copenhagen); and on the utility
of management tools in pedagogy (SCUDD, 2009, Queen Mary University of
London).
Peter Fleming is Professor of Work and Organization at Queen Mary
College, University of London. Peter has previously held posts at the
University of Melbourne and the University of Cambridge. His books
include Contesting the Corporation (2007, Cambridge University Press),
Charting Corporate Corruption (2009, Edward Elgar Press) and
Authenticity and the Cultural Politics of Work (2009, Oxford
University Press).
References
Adorno, T. (2003/1964) The Jargon of Authenticity, trans. Knut
Tarnowksi and Frederic Will. London/New York: Routledge.
Benjamin, W. (1933) ?Experience and poverty?, trans. Rodney
Livingstone. In Jennings, Michael W., Eiland, Howard and Smith, Gary
(eds.) (1999) Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings. Volume 2, part 2,
1931-1934. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, W. (1940) ?On some motifs in Baudelaire?, trans. Harry Zohn.
In Eiland,Howard and Jennings, Michael W. (eds.) (2003) Walter
Benjamin: Selected Writings. Volume 4, 1938-1940. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Fleming, P. (2009) Authenticity, and the Cultural Politics of Work:
New Forms of
Informal Control. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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